The Chosen One Read Online Free PDF

Worth it . I glanced around the room. Emily still played with her baby doll, humming.
    “That’s okay,” Joshua said. “I can wait a minute.”
    For a long moment we sat together like this. Then Joshua loosened his hand from mine and played the chord like he’d known it all along.
    “Good job,” I said, his left hand resting on my hip like it was a part of me. My fingertips felt hot, like it was me who’d been playing for hours, not teaching.
    “I’ve been practicing,” he said.
    “Really? Good,” I said. “I’m proud of . . .”
    And then I kissed him. Just fell into him right in the middle of a sentence. Pressed my lips to his. So soft. Then he was kissing me back. And I didn’t even know how to kiss, had never kissed anyone in my life but my family, and then only little pecks on the cheek.
    It felt like Joshua sucked the breath from me, there on the piano bench, with all the thoughts of sin going through my head, but me not caring at all. Not at all.
    “I better go,” I said, when I finally pushed away from him. My hands trembled. My knees shook.
    And he said, “Don’t be scared, Kyra. I’m right here.”
     
     
    IN THE DARK , I ease around the Johnson trailer. Only the Temple spire is lit up, pointing straight to heaven. Heaven—the place I cannot go now. Not now. Not with all I have done and not with what I’m thinking.
    The longer I walk, the longer I try to get away from what has happened tonight, the more I realize that I have to get away. I have to run away.
    “You have a month,” I say as I walk toward the Temple to wait. “A month to plan. And then go.”
     
    __________
     
    ON THE TEMPLE , right over the tall double doors is one large stone eye. It’s hand-carved and big as a car.
    That eye watches us walk into meetings and out of meetings four hours later. It looks out over the parking lot and the Prophet’s and Apostles’ homes. It sees the Fellowship Hall and the community building and the cars that come and go. It looks toward the trailers and our gardens and the stand of trees that run back along the river. It watches people shopping in the small store owned and operated by Brother Greer.
    That eye sees us all the time.
    “God’s eye,” Prophet Childs says sometimes. “He sees all. He lets me know all.”
    I used to dream about that eye. In my dream the eye blinked and walked around the Compound looking for something sweet to eat.
    There’s a concrete stairwell that runs down the rear of the Temple. It leads to a back entrance. The door there’s always locked. It’s shaded and cool in the heat of the summer. And it’s hard to see anyone in that farthest corner, especially at night.
    A chain with a sign saying DO NOT ENTER shields the stairwell. No one ever goes there.
    Except,
    some nights,
    Joshua and I meet in that stairwell. We can’t talk because our voices echo. But we meet there. I kissed him in that stairwell so long one night, my lips felt bruised the next morning.
     
     
    JOSHUA ’ S THERE in just a few minutes. He takes my hands and pulls me to his chest and says, “What, Kyra? What’s wrong?”
    How does he know I’m scared? Could he hear it when I called his name?
    At first I don’t think I can even say anything. The words are frozen in my throat. They can’t get past my tongue.
    “Tell me.” His face comes close to mine. I smell his minty toothpaste. He’s so warm that the front of me feels sort of calmed down, pressed like I am to Joshua.
    At last the words have thawed.
    “I’ve been Chosen.”
     
     
    ONE NIGHT , Joshua and I met near the Temple. No lights burned anywhere because it was after eleven-thirty. Everyone must be in bed by this time. The devil, we’ve been told, rules the night. Joshua and I shouldn’t have been out.
    That night I almost laughed thinking about it all. How we shouldn’t be doing any of this. Not touching, not whispering to each other. Not spending time pressed together like we did. Does Satan rule me? I